


There's No Punchline

by sharkgriffin



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst and Humor, Dancing, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, High School, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 20:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3394910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkgriffin/pseuds/sharkgriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Spring homecoming at Silas High School. Carmilla's date thought they were just friends and is making out with her brother and Laura's date has taken an interest in her best friend. After sharing some humor, the two decide to show them what they're missing out on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's No Punchline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toothiastrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toothiastrid/gifts).



They were the odd couple. She felt the eyes on them as they strode, hand in hand, him almost bending down to reach her, into the school cafeteria which, for one night only, had been transformed into what the teachers had tried to pass off as a grand ballroom. Except it wasn't. It was more like a five year old's birthday party. Balloons hung from the ceiling and streamers covered the walls, reading 'Silas High School Homecoming'. The music that the elderly DJ played as he straightened his baseball cap to try and make himself look more cool, was unheard of, no one, not even the glee club were under the disco ball, dancing.

The only thing in fact, that distinguished this from the birthday party of a five year old, was the guests, sexually active teenagers who apparently couldn't keep themselves apart for even thirty seconds and would sometimes block the door to continue with their making out sessions.

Laura knew the eyes were on her, her and her prom date, Kirsch. They didn't really look particularly strange, she wore a white lace dress that came down almost to her ankles. Of course, it was the exact same length as every other girl's outfit, but their sparkling dresses of red and blue and purple and pink, only came halfway down the upper section of their legs. Her hair was twisted back in a bun, it had been curled slightly so a few strands bounced off her neck, and a white rose corsage had been tied, rather tightly around her wrist.

Kirsch wore the same as every other boy here, a black suit which included pants, a blazer and shiny shoes, a crisp white shirt and a black bow tie. Not much could be done with his hair which was stubbly and short, almost completely shaven off.

No, the oddest thing about the couple was the height difference. Laura swore she had stopped growing at eleven or twelve, she was five foot one, average for a seven year old, maybe. One of her friends, LaFontaine, suggested she should wear heels tonight, as they put it, "to take them down." But practising walking around in her bedroom, she had tripped and stumbled so many times, her legs were coated in black bruises. So she went with a smart pair of ballet pumps instead.

Kirsch was kind of like an extremely oversized toddler, God knows how tall, at least six foot, if not taller, about an inch higher into the air than another of Laura's friends, the Amazonian Danny Lawrence.

The arrangement between two of them that they would go together had been solidified a week before when she had no other choice for who to go with. Not good at handling her boy skills, she had asked Danny if they could go with each other. "As friends," she added as she gazed the great difference between herself and Danny's eyes.

"Sorry, Laura. You know what I think of prom. So the whole Summer Society is going to boycott it."

And then she had gone to LaFontaine and one more friend, Lola Perry. They were planning on attending together.

"Well, Susan-I mean LaFontaine and I-we've been dating for four months, it will be our first homecoming and we were hoping it could be romantic, just the two of us," Perry explained. "But I have a good idea," she had shrieked excitedly. "Why don't you ask Kirsch?"

So here she was now, hand in hand with Godzilla, the guy who had had a crush on her since sixth grade, who since then had stopped referring to her as 'little hottie', calling her by her given name instead in the hope of arousing her attention. She had thought he would be happy about this moment but instead, he shuffled along, head down, gloomily, silent and not speaking to her.

She caught sight of Perry and LaFontaine now, across the room. It wasn't hard to spot their two ginger heads, pressed against each other. Perry was wearing a green dress, modest and covering up most of her neckline, doing the almost the same job as her favorite turtleneck sweaters. LaFontaine had gelled their hair forwards, so that it rose in what could be deemed an Elvis haircut, a cream colored shirt and teal bow tie suiting them perfectly. They waved to her as she hopped from one foot to another, then they were part of the crowd again.

"So, Laura," Kirsch said, finally breaking into the conversation. "How are you?"

"Yeah, I'm good," she replied to him, unable to structure a better answer.

"How's your journalism project going?"

"Good, good."

"Good." He echoed her words and then glanced from left to right. "Hey, the Zetas are planning a party next week. Everyone's going to be there. You wanna come?"

"Sure." This has been the problem with her and Kirsch, why they would never work out, what he is probably starting to work out right now and the doubt returning to Laura's mind. They had absolutely nothing in common. He was the jock, the sporty guy who all the girls were after and who lived to be social and join in with his bros. She was the nerdy one, keen and enthusiastic to get the highest grades, to get into the highest of colleges, sucking up to teachers and maybe coming on a little too perky.

"Who's that hottie over there?" Kirsch suddenly asked, interrupting her train of thought. He was pointing towards a tall girl who was partly obscured by the crowd. As she turned to face them, she saw a flurry of red hair, a plaid shirt over a lime green T-shirt, which bore two S's. She realized with a jolt, it was Danny. A few other members of the Summer Society, her activities group which she ran for some of the more headstrong girls in the school, stood behind her, also dressed casually and with folded arms. Danny was speaking to the DJ now, he had his hands on his hips and she was holding out a hand as if she hoped he would give her something.

Laura felt some slight anger at her, for refusing her invitation mainly, and lying, saying she wasn't coming. But then, she certainly looked like her and the Summer Society had something planned, even if they weren't going to miss the homecoming entirely.

"Laura, would you care if I went over and talked to her?"

"Sure. I mean, I don't care, you go and...make friends."

Once he had trotted away from her, she made for the punch bowl, a short queue now to there. Every year, someone would try to sneak alcohol of some kind into the homecoming, to sneak it into the punch when none of the teachers were looking. Yet, they seemed to be caught every time. But now her date had ditched her, she needed alcohol. She would just have to hope the rebel group had succeeded this time. Just as she was nearing the table, a girl in a black dress with a scarlet ribbon pulled tightly around it, jostled past her and began to serve herself.

"Excuse me, I think I-"

The girl spun around, facing her in an irritated kind of way. She was exceedingly pretty in a dark, gothic way with heavy kohl lined eyes and raven hair, like deep, black ink. She spoke in a low drawl, slowly, like she was trying and failing to come off as mysterious. Laura knew her, vaguely, Carmilla Karnstein, they were in some of the same classes.

"Cutie, I'm having a bit of a rough night right now and I need something to calm my nerves." She took a sip of the red liquid.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I don't think if you're having a bad night, that gives you the right to-"

"I don't have the time to argue now, Sweetheart. Why don't you just go complain to the principal instead of wasting my time with your whining." Her voice was heavy with irony and she tried to push herself away. However, Laura could already see tears forming in her eyes.

"Wait, I didn't know you were upset. I'm sorry if I made you cry?"

"You, make my cry? In your dreams. No, I just have bad hay fever."

"I know something's wrong. Carmilla, that's your name, right?"

Carmilla gave her a nod.

"Let's just say we've both been having a rough night and people say I'm good at helping people sort out their feelings so if there's anything I can do to help-"

Carmilla sighed. "Fine. You see that girl over there?" She pointed to an attractive looking, though rather slim, girl who stood across the hall from them, conversing in conversation with a boy who looked exceptionally like Carmilla herself. This wore a similar dress to Laura, white and long, though hers was sleeveless and stood out more in contrast to the girl's inky black hair which writhed like serpents on her bony shoulders.

As Laura, nodded, Carmilla continued.

"Had a crush on her since ninth grade. Been meaning to ask her out for a while. And she said yes to coming with me tonight. Apparently she thought we were just friends and when I leaned in for the kiss-yeah, I bet you can imagine what happened there, cherry pie."

Laura found these nicknames rather disconcerting.

"She's over with my brother, Will now. Apparently his seduction eyes are the thing nowadays."

She took another sip of her drink, not pausing to stop and breathe, swallowing the entire enormous sip in one. Carmilla's own eyes were narrowed as they tried not to fall back on her crush and her brother. They were slightly red, as if she had let out some tears but managed to hold back before anyone noticed. That didn't stop her black mascara and the thin line of black on her eyelid being immaculate.

"Well I'm not having so much of a good night, either. My date, Kirsch, he's gone to chat up my friend, Danny."

"Oh, how the tables have turned. The amount of time you spend with that Xena chick, I thought she would have been your date."

"Oh, no," Laura stuttered and found herself grinning just a little. "She's not my girlfriend, she...I'm not really into either of them."

"Too bad. Because I would have loved to see a kiss scene between you and one of them. Maybe you'd have to stand on a ladder to reach them?"

She perched on a pile of chairs which had been stacked up to make way for tonight's dancers, still clutching her empty paper cup and crushing it between her elegant fingers, painted with black, chipped nail polish.

"Hey, I know what will cheer you up. I've got a prom related joke."

"Go ahead, what do I have to lose?"

"Alright, so there's this guy and he takes the hottest girl in his school to prom and anyway, he arrives and he wants to make a really good impression. Now this girl, she's got him wrapped around her finger and she asks him to go and buy her a pack of chips. So he waits in the longest queue for food that you've ever seen and he brings her back her chips, but now she wants a balloon the teachers are giving away. So it's another long queue and once she's got her balloon, she asks him to ask the DJ to play her favorite song."

"And what would her favorite song be?"

"I don't know."

"Now I'm intrigued by this tale of wonder. And I'd like some details."

"Fine, her favorite song is Shake It Off. And then he-"

"I can't say much for her taste in music."

"I'm just improvising."

"Really, because I can see you're quite the Taylor Swift fan, buttercup."

"Can I just continue with the joke? And then Shake It Off starts playing when he gets to the front of that queue and then she asks him for some punch. So he goes to get her some punch and there's no queue. There's no punchline! Get it?" She nudged Carmilla, maybe just a little to violently in the ribs so that she jerked to the side and gave Laura what she could only define as a death glare.

"Ha, ha, I'm dying." Her lips oozed sarcasm.

"Come on, do you have no sense of humor?"

Carmilla wasn't listening, her eyes were fixed again on the black haired girl who was now winding her arms around Will as she slid her tongue down his throat.

"Carmilla, come on. Carmilla, ignore them. They just...don't realized how special you are." She stared down at the caps of her knees and quickly crossed her legs. "I know, why don't we try and make them jealous, show them what they're missing out on."

"What are you talking about?"

"Maybe we could...dance together?" she offered.

Carmilla shrugged. "Sure.

And soon they were whirling around, Carmilla holding a secure hand over Laura's back, letting her twist under her arm as she raised it in the air. They were chest to chest, their noses almost touching. Carmilla had a very good nose, Laura observed. An exquisite nose, she then decided as this style of old fashioned dancing she was sure had made her adapt her vocabulary.

The music didn't matter. The crowd of awkward giggling teenagers didn't matter. LaFontaine and Perry and Danny and Kirsch and Will and Carmilla's ex-crush had all faded out of the picture, like it was just the two of them, alone in a barren world.

And then came the next surprise, most unexpected of all. Carmilla was leaning in, they were even closer than before, like a wild animal, hungrily, she pulled Laura in to an angry kiss, clutching her cheeks with sharp nails which dug into her skin. And this wasn't like how Carmilla had joked about it being with Kirsch and Danny because Carmilla was only her height superior by three or four inches. And she knew this was all just to get back at their dates for ditching them, in a hopeless, frail cry for envy but Laura found, she was almost enjoying the sensation of Carmilla's tongue against hers.

Their silence that before had only been punctured by their quick breaths and the thudding of their hearts was pulled to a stop by a shout, amplified through a microphone. Laura turned away from Carmilla for just a second to see the Summer Society girls now standing in a row onstage, Danny at the head of them, having stolen the microphone from an utterly astonished DJ and raising a fist in the air as she was lovingly watched by Kirsch.

"Down with high school proms! Bring homecoming to an end! Popularity is an illusion put on by the pressure of the Canadian education system! Down with prom king, down with prom queen!" This rant went on for a while, generally in the same direction, until the Principal, who had been asked to sit in and watch but had decided to snooze in a corner, rushed towards her, awoken by the noise, and stole the microphone back. The elderly woman seemed flustered as she pushed back her gray hair.

"Thank you for that, Miss Lawrence. And now to announce the prom king and queen."

"Am I invisible?" Danny yelled as she stormed away, Kirsch trailing behind her.

"Wait angry hottie, wait!" he called out as he jogged away but didn't quite seem able to keep up.

"Well our plan worked, she seems pretty angry," Laura agreed as she faced Carmilla again.

"Yeah. Wanna head out of here? I can't bear another second in here?"

And so they made their way out into the cool night air, where the announcements could not reach them, neither could the cheering, where they were entirely alone.

"I guess you want to go now?"

"You know that kiss wasn't fake, creampuff," Carmilla said.

"What?" Laura tried to stop herself erupting into nervous giggles. Her cheeks flushed red. "What are you saying to me?"

"Yeah, I was angry with my brother for not being supportive. I was angry the girl I liked didn't pick up my signs."

Laura noted how she used past tense for 'liked'.

"But you're not some distraction. You're cute, funny, maybe not so funny, at least you can talk about feelings without completely judging me. Yeah, don't know what I ever saw in that other girl now. Tell me I'm reading these signs right."

Laura thought for a minute before she replied. She checked over both shoulders first though, in case this was some stupid Zeta prank, in case they were waiting behind the bush with their iphones out, ready to upload this to Youtube.

"You're reading the signs right," she said, and then. "And I could really do with some more punch."


End file.
